


things the homilies and hymns won’t teach ya

by evocates



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Afterlife, Canon Character of Color, Cross my heart, Gen, I'm not in this fandom, M/M, Really I'm not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 04:17:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5149973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evocates/pseuds/evocates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aaron Burr dies.  </p>
<p>Sometimes it’s easier to understand someone in death than in life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	things the homilies and hymns won’t teach ya

**Author's Note:**

> This is the result of listening to the _Hamilton_ soundtrack for something like 20 times for the past two or so weeks, singing _Wait for It_ really loudly in the shower, and being hit so hard by an idea that I slipped and nearly cracked my head open on the floor. (None of these are hyperbolic.)
> 
> I apologise in advance for any discrepancies. I’m working off only on the music and some videos here, because I live literally continents away from Broadway. Beta’d by my lovely kikibug13.

His hair turned white after little Theo’s death. Not immediately after, as much as he would like to claim that it did, but a few years after.

(She was a grown woman when the ship went down, but she would always be his little girl. She still was, even when all he had left of her was cold stone and an empty grave.)

It made him look distinguished, his friends insisted in what was likely a misguided attempt to comfort him about his looks going. But he supposed there was some truth in that – the stark white made his dark skin stand out more, after all.

Once, he tried to grow it out until it reached his shoulders. He looked himself in the mirror one day, and tried, by some sort of impulse, to pull his hair back into a ponytail. His reflection in the mirror did not look like—

He took a pair of scissors and cut it all off. The strands fell onto the wooden floorboards of his home, crushing with its lightness the rest of that particular sentence.

Now he was on his deathbed. _Finally_ , he thought. He lived for far too long. Four decades since his wife died, over two since his daughter did, and… and in between…

What was he leaving behind? He had been left behind so many times, so what now was he leaving behind?

There was no one beside him. He sent the priest away long ago. All he had left was white sheets and the blue canopy of his bed.

Was his legacy just this – a canopy, and some sheets? Did it really matter? He reached upwards, looking at his gnarled, wrinkled hands spotted with white. The darkness was coming, he knew. He curled his thumb and his fingers, the index slightly extended, beckoning.

Just before he felt the chill take over him, he could see, out of the corner of his eyes, a man with hair to his shoulders, and skin the colour of pre-bloodied Weehawken soil.

***

The first thing he was aware of: a ridiculously white light, unlike any he had ever seen, surrounding him.

The second thing he was aware of: a fist landing on his face.

Burr stepped backwards, holding a hand to his cheek. He scowled immediately, unable to help himself. But words ran dry in his mouth when he looked up.

Alexander Hamilton stood there, and he was staring at his own fist. Burr watched as he flexed his hand a few times.

“Hah,” Hamilton said, sounding nearly as bemused as Burr felt. “That didn’t feel as good as I thought it would.”

“What,” Burr said, because that encompassed his reaction to Hamilton through his entire life.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” Hamilton shrugged. “Thirty years or so?”

“Man builds a financial system,” Burr drawled, straightening up, “and he can’t do some simple arithmetic.”

He thought about punching Hamilton back. Honestly, he deserved it.

Hamilton rolled his eyes. Which, Burr reflected, was a perfect summary of Hamilton’s general reaction towards _him_ , too.

“It’s hard to keep track of time around here,” he said, waving an arm.

Here. Burr’s eyes followed that arm. There was nothing around except bright light. As if he was in the sky itself, hidden in the cloud. 

“So I guess this means I’m dead,” he said. He turned back to Hamilton, raising both eyebrows. “So why are _you_ here?”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Hamilton said. “What is the logic that God uses to choose people’s guides towards the afterlife? I asked around but no one gave me an answer, so I came up with a few possibilities…”

Burr stared at him. “Of _course_ you did,” he said, because God forbid – no, literally, _God forbid_ – that Hamilton stopped when he was dead.

Hamilton gave him another shrug, and continued, undeterred. “So you see, I saw Laurens, His Excellency, my mother, and my son right before the bullet hit me.” Burr blinked, opening his mouth. But Hamilton had hold of a point, and he was speeding on.

“But it was Philip who met me here,” another twitch of his hand towards the space. Burr had the sudden thought that Hamilton was immensely irritated that he could only describe this place as ‘here’ – a single word instead of a paragraph. He was likely right.

“When my father came, I got dragged out to guide him too,” he continued. “So I’m guessing – an intelligent guess – that it probably has to do with someone’s greatest regret.”

Burr opened his mouth. He closed it. He rubbed a hand over his face.

“So tell me,” he said, keeping his voice even with some effort. “Have you sent some proposals to God Himself yet about the possible improvements he might make to the afterlife?”

Hamilton brightened. _Oh Lord save me,_ Burr prayed, because he knew that look. Oh, did he know that look. He could recognise that look in the dark with no light except for a single candle flickering in the summer wind. He _did_ recognise that look in the dark with no light except for a single candle flickering in the summer wind. 

(Thank you, Hamilton, for making his wife think that he was having a lover at the side for two seconds before laughing at him for the next ten minutes after he told her what really was happening at the door. Thank you, really.) 

This was precisely the look that Hamilton took up whenever he had an idea that he really, really wanted to share with the world.

“Stop,” he held up a hand. “I don’t want to know.”

“But,” Hamilton protested.

“I really don’t want to know,” Burr said. Before Hamilton could continue, Burr said, perhaps abruptly:

“Why aren’t you angry with me?”

Hamilton’s mouth clicked shut. Burr couldn’t even find it within himself to feel any kind of pleasure about it.

“I was,” he said finally. His hands shoved into his pockets. Then he took one out, and flapped it in the general direction of Burr’s face. “That’s why I punched you. You remember that, yeah?”

“You _were_ ,” Burr stressed. His hands clenched at his side. It didn’t make sense: Hamilton punched him, but they were… they were almost joking with each other. Like they had in New York when they worked next to each other in the same building. When they were…

Not friends. They had never really been friends. Something approaching that, perhaps, but not that precise word. Something in-between. There was something friendly there, but it had all soured before that. It soured the moment he procured that Senate seat.

(Somehow, he still couldn’t find it within himself to regret that.)

Hamilton turned away from him. Without him even thinking about it, Burr was reaching out a hand, to force him to turn and look at him properly. But his fingers froze of their accord before he could reach Hamilton, and he let it back down to his side.

“We leave all our burdens and regrets behind at Heaven’s gate,” Hamilton said. He looked back, and he smiled.

Burr had never noticed it before, but he did now: just a moment ago, Hamilton looked like how he had during his wedding – in his twenties, with a face unlined. Now… now the wrinkles were creeping in, there was grey threading through his mahogany hair, and his shoulders began to hunch, the straight lines bending into a curve.

Now he looked like how he had after his son died.

“I’ve had a long time to think about things,” he said. “I don’t… I don’t regret what I said, and I still think it’s true.” He shrugged again. “But… I was the one who threw away my shot.”

Burr looked down at his hands. They were the hands of an old man. Somehow, he wasn’t surprised.

“I never did figure out why you did that,” hesaid. His own voice had grown quiet.

Hamilton laughed. It was a quiet, mirthless sound. “I don’t know why either,” he said. “I guess… I guess I was just tired that everyone I loved went away, and I was the only one left who survived.”

Burr couldn’t help himself: he threw his head back, and laughed. The sound ripped out of him, tearing through his stomach, his lungs. It shredded his throat to pieces, but he couldn’t help himself.

“How…” he choked out. “How do think you _I_ feel?”

Hamilton stilled. Through the tears in his eyes, Burr saw him cock his head to the side.

“When I was alive, I had to find out about you by going back and reading newspapers,” Hamilton told him. His voice was soft, so soft. “I understood you better now that I’m dead than when I was alive, because here… here, I could talk to your wife. I could talk to your parents. I could talk to your grandfather, your grandmother. I talked to everybody who knew because you… I just don’t _get_ you and I _want_ to and…”

He dug his hands into his hair. “Do you know how incredibly strange that is? I talked to dead people and they told me more about you in _one year_ than you told me in _thirty_. At least ten times more! I learned that you actually have _opinions_ , Burr! I know more about your opinion on Rosseau than I knew about your opinion about New York and you were _its Senator_!”

Somehow, Hamilton had grabbed onto Burr’s collar, and he was practically shaking him.

“Do you know how frustrating that is?”

“I have some idea,” Burr said. He wiped his hand over his eyes, then used it to loosen Hamilton’s grip on him. To his surprise, the other man went easily.

“You had the dead to talk to,” he shrugged. “I just wondered about it for thirty years. Why you threw away your shot.”

He tried to smile. “See, I know more about you now too.”

Hamilton seemed to be caught in between rolling his eyes and sighing. He managed both at the same time. “You could’ve talked to Eliza,” he said.

“Talk less,” Burr said. His smile widened, turning grotesque with almost too many teeth. “Think more.”

Before Hamilton could say another word, Burr took a step back, and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I do, you know,” he said quietly. “To answer the question you’re not asking.”

“What question?” Hamilton blinked.

“I regret it,” he said. “Not throwing away that shot.”

“Oh,” Hamilton said. “Wait,” he narrowed his eyes. “How did you figure out I was thinking about asking that?”

“You’re _obvious_ , Alexander,” Burr sighed.

“Oh,” Hamilton said again. ”That’s… that’s less satisfying than I thought it would be.”

“What _will_ make you satisfied?” Burr asked, half in exasperation and half in genuine curiosity.

“Perhaps,” Hamilton said, lips twitching at the corners, “I might be satisfied if you tell me that I was right about everything.”

Burr closed his eyes. “No,” he said. Of _course_ Hamilton would ask for such a thing – he seemed to aim for only the impossible.

Hamilton laughed. “I thought not.”

He was grinning again. There was still grey in his hair and crow’s feet around his eyes, but that was somehow… fitting.

Perhaps Burr was simply being selfish. Looking at Hamilton in his youth reminded him about how young the man had died. How young he was when Burr killed- when he murdered him.

“I still don’t understand you,” he said.

“We have time,” Hamilton told him, and his voice was gentler than Burr had ever heard it sound. 

He reached out a hand.

How many times had that been extended to him? _Give us a verse, drop some knowledge._ Not Hamilton’s words, but the invitation was still there in his eyes. How many times did he turn it away?

Well. Perhaps he had waited long enough. He took the hand.

“I don’t know where you’re taking me,” he said.

Hamilton laughed again. “I did say that I know some dead people,” he said, and he pulled.

Burr followed.

Really, what else could he do?

_End_

**Author's Note:**

> Written in something like an hour after my near-fatal fall in the shower. Dammit, I don’t want to be in this fandom. There’s no way I can watch this musical. How am I supposed to be in the fandom when I can’t watch the actual source material?


End file.
